The IRS placed Donald Trump’s 2017 and 2018 tax returns under audit following his departure from the White House, according to information from the Congressional body known as the Joint Committee on Taxation.
A report from that panel was released in connection with a vote by the House Ways and Means Committee to release information from six years of Trump’s federal returns and filings for several business entities associated with him. Copies of the documents themselves, with personally identifying information like Social Security numbers removed, were released on Friday. The joint committee’s report indicated IRS discussions about Trump’s 2017 returns began before Trump left office — and before the 2020 elections, and according to further info, IRS agents planned on the review of his 2017 filings encompassing portions of Trump’s docs more expansive than before.
“The IRS team manager communicated to Mr. Trump’s representative that while the 2014 – 2016 examinations were limited issue examinations focused on rollover issues from prior cycles (i.e., 2009 – 2013) and any significantly material issues, it had always been the IRS’s plan that the 2017 examination would not be a limited scope examination and might require additional team members,” per the report. The panel indicated it didn’t receive any revenue agent’s report (RAR) in the audit files indicating the IRS audit of filings made in 2017 and 2018 concluded. It was in September of last year when the panel’s recap says a senior agent established an examination plan for use in the audit, and the federal tax agency subsequently issued a series of requests for info from Trump and one of his business entities.
Among what agents put under scrutiny was whether Trump was right to claim losses associated with his now defunct Trump University, although on that isolated point, the agency evidently concluded the ex-president had a sufficient basis for claiming those impacts. Other issues were millions in losses Trump claimed for 2018 in connection to his now defunct hotel in Washington, D.C., where foreign interests sometimes spent big — creating another opportunity for a conflict of interest for the then-president in deciding policy matters. Trump sometimes kept his personal tax bills dramatically low with the huge losses he claimed. In 2017, he paid just $750 — and he didn’t pay anything for 2020. Trump predictably alleged that releasing his returns would create some kind of damaging precedent — or whatever, but most contenders for the White House already do!
